A Jewish Girlhood in Berlin, 1859-1879

Jenny Barth Bornstein was an intelligent and spirited child who would become one of Germany’s first women physicians. Her frank and lively account of her childhood and adolescence in 1860s and 1870s Berlin paints a portrait of an upwardly-mobile Jewish family in Bismarck’s Germany. Jenny’s narrative is rich in detail, humor and pathos. It reflects the optimism of a prosperous and expansive epoch in German history, one in which German Jews increasingly became urban and middle class. Jenny’s memoir, now in English, is enriched by an introduction, an epilogue, footnotes and photographs.